CHAPTER XIX
The Victory

For the student of military history, the Papuan Campaign is most noteworthy for
the tactical aspects of its final or beachhead phase, for it was at the
Buna-Gona beachhead that the Allies, for the first time in World War II,
encountered and reduced an area fortified and defended in depth by the
Japanese. Although the attack was from the landward, and succeeding campaigns
generally from the sea, the basic tactical situation was the same--the Allies
were attacking and the Japanese were defending an elaborately fortified area.
The essential difference was thus not that Buna was a land operation while the
succeeding operations were amphibious; it was rather that in later campaigns
the attacking troops hit the beachhead better prepared and supported, with a
variety of tactics and weapons for the speedy reduction of the Japanese
positions. In the Buna area, on the other hand, poorly supported Allied
infantry attacked again and again in vain; the action took on the aspect of a
siege, and starvation was a significant factor in the enemy's final collapse.
American conduct of operations was to profit from Buna as from few other
campaigns, and the profit was to accrue not only in the negative sense, but in
the positive sense as well.

The Campaign in Review

The Time Element

Contrary to the final headquarters press release on the subject, the Papuan
Campaign had been neither cheaply won nor conducted on the supposition that
there was "no necessity of a hurry attack."1
In the perspective of succeeding
Pacific campaigns, the picture, especially in the final beachhead phase of
operations, had been rather one in which the troops suffered heavy casualties
while being hastily pressed forward in repeated attacks on prepared enemy
positions with little more in the way of weapons than

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their rifles, machine guns, mortars, and hand grenades.

Throughout the fighting, General Eichelberger had been a man under pressure.
Told by General MacArthur on 30 November that "time was of the essence," on 13
December that "time is working desperately against us," and on 25 December that
"if results were not achieved shortly the whole picture [might] radically
change," General Eichelberger had pushed the attack in every way he could.2
On 18 December, though able to report progress, he nevertheless made it a point to
assure General MacArthur that he "never forgot for a moment that we have not
much time. . . ." On 30 December, when General Herring asked him why he did not
let his troops "take it easy since the Australians were not going to do
anything today or tomorrow," Eichelberger had replied that he had no intention
of doing so, for he had always considered that "time was the essential element
of the attack."3
Whether GHQ realized it or not, hurrying the attack had
become the leitmotiv of the campaign.

The Losses

During the six months that the Australian ground forces had been in action,
they had committed seven infantry brigades and one dismounted cavalry unit of
battalion strength.4
Though there were times when elements of as many as four
brigades were in the line, the Australians usually had no
more than three brigades (roughly 7,000 to 7,500 men) in contact with the
enemy at any one time. Sometimes they had as few as two and, during the opening
weeks of the campaign, less than two.

The American ground commitment, dating from mid-November 1942, was four
infantry regiments--the 126th, 127th, 128th, and the 163d Infantry Regiments, a
total of just under 15,000 men. During most of the period that the Americans
were in action, they had at least three regiments at the front, though until
the arrival of the 127th Infantry in early December there had been only two.
There were almost no replacements, and the strength of the units fell steadily
until, in a few instances, they were near the extinction point when relieved.5

The campaign cost the Australian ground forces, 5,698 battle casualties--1,731
killed in action, 306 dead of wounds, 128 dead from other causes, and 3,533
wounded in action.6
American ground casualties were 2,848--687 killed in
action, 160 dead of wounds, 17 dead from other causes, 66 missing in action,
and 1,918 wounded in action.

Of the 66 Americans missing, the 32d Division lost 62 and the 163d Infantry
lost 4. Other losses sustained by the 32d Division but not included as among
the killed, wounded, or missing were 211 from shell

All together 3,095 Australians and Americans lost their lives in the campaign,
and 5,451 were wounded. Total battle casualties were 8,546.8

Australian losses had been so heavy that brigade after brigade had seen its
battalions reduced to company strength and less before it was relieved.9
But if the Australian units had suffered severe attrition, so had the 32d Division.
General Eichelberger put the situation to General MacArthur in a sentence.
"Regiments here," he wrote in mid-January, "soon have the strength of
battalions and a little later are not much more than companies."10
The casualty reports bear out General Eichelberger's
observation. Out of their total strength in the combat zone of 10,825, the
three combat teams of the 32d Division had suffered 9,688 casualties, including
7,125 sick,11
a casualty rate of almost 90 percent. The 126th Infantry,
hardest-hit of the three, had 131 officers and 3,040 enlisted men when it
entered the combat zone in mid-November. When it was evacuated to Port Moresby
on 22 January, 32 officers and 579 enlisted men were left--less than a full
battalion. The regiment as such had ceased to exist.12

A detailed strength report of the 126th Infantry Regiment as of 20 January 1943, two days before it was returned to Port Moresby, was as follows:

Regt

Offrs

EM

2d Bn

Offrs

EM

Hq Co

7

39

Hq Co

2

45

Serv Co

3

12

Co E

1

16

At Co

0

10

Co F

1

22

Can Co

0

14

Co G

1

27

Co H

1

16

10

75

6

126

1st Bn

3d Bn

Hq Co

4

86

Hq Co

3

27

Co A

2

69

Co I

0

17

Co B

2

62

Co K

0

18

Co C

2

52

Co L

1

14

Co D

0

17

Co M

2

16

10

286

6

92

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The amount of sickness during the campaign had been crushingly heavy. With
only a few thousand more troops in action, the Australians had 15,575 cases of
infectious disease to the end of 1942 alone, including 9,249 cases of malaria,
3,643 cases of dysentery, 1,186 cases of dengue fever, and 186 cases of scrub
typhus.13
The Americans, out of the 14,646 troops committed in the combat area,
had a total of 8,659 during the course of the campaign. There were 5,358 cases
of malaria among the almost 11,000 troops of the 32d Division who served in New
Guinea--4,000 first attacks, and the rest recurrences. In addition, the medical
record showed 17 deaths from scrub typhus, and 2,147 cases of "miscellaneous
disease," including dysentery and dengue fever.14

When the troops reached
Australia, a check of their physical condition revealed that each man had
suffered a sharp loss in weight, that 563 were still suffering from diarrhea
and dysentery, and that 1,200 had hookworm. Anemia, exhaustion, and
malnutrition had taken heavy toll: one out of every five had a low blood count,
and one out of every eight had poor hemoglobin.15

The diarrheas, the anemias, and the hookworms yielded to treatment, but much of
the malaria did not. Neither rest, suppressive drugs, nor special care proved of avail in more than half of the
cases treated. The patients got worse instead of better. Relapse followed
relapse until finally the men had to be dropped from the division in September
as unfit for combat. The total number dropped at the time was 2,334 officers
and men,16
all of them casualties of the campaign just as surely as if they had
been wounded in battle.

With the story presumably the same in the case of the Australians, the
conclusion is inescapable that the fighting in Papua had been even costlier
than had at first been thought, and that the victory there, proportionate to
the forces engaged, had been one of the costliest of the Pacific war.

The enemy had suffered much heavier losses. The Japanese committed between
16,000 and 17,000 troops to the campaign. They successfully evacuated 1,300
men from Milne Bay and 300 from Goodenough Island. An estimated 1,000 sick and
wounded were returned to Rabaul from Basabua during the period that Japanese
ships were still making the run there, and about 2,000 men, including sick and
wounded, managed to get out by sea and on foot during the closing days of the
campaign. The Japanese had thus successfully evacuated about 4,500 men, and
lost approximately 12,000.17
Of the latter number, the Allies buried 7,000 and
took 350

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JAPANESE PRISONERS AT DOBODURA eating canned rations supplied by Australian soldiers. These prisoners were brought in by 163d Infantrymen.

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prisoners.18
The Japanese apparently buried the remaining 4,500 or 5,000.

Starvation As a Factor in Operations

Starvation had worn down the enemy troops and had contributed directly to their
final defeat. The evidences of cannibalism that the Australians and the 163d
Infantry encountered on the Soputa-Sanananda track, and the emaciated enemy
remains the 127th Infantry found scattered about in the Giruwa hospital area
were indicative of the level to which the Japanese had been reduced during the
closing weeks of the campaign. How greatly their resistance was undermined by
starvation during the weeks immediately preceding was another matter not so
easily determined.

When Gona fell on 9 December, the Australians found some moldy rice and a
little ammunition left--enough for only a few more days of fighting. There had
still been a little food and ammunition on hand when Buna Village was overrun
on 14 December, but very little food and virtually no ammunition was taken when
Buna Mission fell on 2 January. The Japanese had received their last two ounces
of rice on 12 January, two days after the 163d Infantry had found indisputable
evidence that some of them had already been reduced to cannibalism. As each
successive position on the front fell, it became evident from the horrible
emaciation of the corpses of those who had defended it that they could not have
held their positions much longer even had there been no attack.

Maj. Mitsuo Koiwai, commanding officer of the 2d Battalion, 41st Infantry, the
only field grade officer of the South Seas Detachment known to have gone all through the campaign and survived it,19
when interrogated at the end of the war, said, "We lost at Buna because we could not
retain air superiority, because we could not supply our troops, and because our
navy and air force could not disrupt the enemy supply line." When he was asked
about the effectiveness of the Allied attack, he agreed that it had been
skillfully conducted and then added an observation which had apparently been in
the minds of most of the Japanese at the beachhead: "Tactically the Allied
co-ordination of fire power and advance was very skillful. However we were in
such a position at Buna that we wondered whether the Americans would by-pass us
and leave us to starve."20
It was clear that starvation had been a potent
factor in the final reduction of the beachhead and that, had the Allies not
been so determined to reduce it by direct attack, hunger would in due course
have accomplished the same thing for them.

Artillery, Air, and Naval Support

The artillery had not played the part of which it was capable in the campaign,
mostly because not enough pieces of the right type for the task in hand had
been sent forward. Though more artillery was repeatedly and urgently requested
by the

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American commanders on the scene, only one artillery piece at the front had
been capable of knocking out a Japanese bunker with a single direct hit. This
was the 105-mm. howitzer of the 129th Field Artillery Battalion, commanded by
Captain Kobs, but even this piece had had too few shells for more than
intermittent firing. Had there been more 105's at the front with enough shells
and delay fuses (or, as General Waldron suggests, a few 155's similarly
provided), there might have been no need to bring in tanks; countless lives
might have been saved, and the campaign might have been appreciably
shortened.21

The air force had played many roles in the campaign, most of them well. Its
transports had moved whole regiments and brigades to the front. In addition to
evacuating some 6,000 Australians and American sick and wounded, it had flown
out other regiments and brigades that were returning to Port Moresby for rest
and rehabilitation. It had delivered 2,450 tons of rations, equipment, and
ammunition to the troops at the front. It had carried out some seventy-two
support missions, using 568 aircraft, 121 of them in close support of attacking
ground troops. Ceaselessly reconnoitering the coasts and searching the sea, it
had disrupted repeated attempts by the enemy to reinforce and supply his
beleaguered beachhead garrison.22

The logistical accomplishment of the air force had been superb. The luggers and
the freighters (including the K.P.M. ships) had, it is true, brought in by sea
more than three times the tonnage that had come in by
air.23
It was nevertheless a fact that the attack could not have been
sustained without the airlift, especially during the critical days in November
and early December when seaborne supply had been reduced to the merest trickle
because of the destruction of the luggers.

The reconnaissance of the coasts and of the sea, the sustained attacks on enemy
convoys seeking to reinforce the beachhead, and the frustration of the enemy's
efforts to establish supply bases at the mouth of the Kumusi and Mambare Rivers
showed the Fifth Air Force and the Australian air units brigaded with it at
their best. Nor was there anything to criticize in the way the air force
spotted for the artillery, or intercepted enemy aircraft over the combat zone.
Both tasks were done admirably.

The quality of its direct support of ground troops was something else again.
Even the statistics of this activity are unimpressive--121 sorties flown, 40 tons
of bombs dropped, and 97,000 rounds of .30-caliber and .50 caliber ammunition
fired. Though this was light support at best, it brought in its train another
difficulty. In far too many instances the pilots bombed and shot up Allied
troops instead of the enemy, with grievous repercussions on troop morale.

There were good reasons for these frequent mishaps. The Fifth Air Force had at
the time too few planes for all its multifarious activities; many of its pilots
were

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inexperienced; and the only planes available for air-ground co-operation were in
general not suited to do the kind of precision bombing required. Not only were
the pilots unable to recognize the Allied front lines from the air, but
air-ground liaison was virtually nonexistent. It was indeed so bad that there
had not been a single instance during the fighting of a pilot's having
successful radio contact with the troops on the ground.24

As the fighting went on, and it came to be realized that the available
aircraft, while excellent for area bombing and the interception of enemy
aircraft, could not be relied on for the pinpoint bombing of enemy positions
under attack by the frontline troops, the air force was called upon less and
less for direct air support. The decision not to use air for the direct support
of the ground troops because of the close quarters at which the battle came to
be waged was a source of regret to the ground commanders who could have used
the air arm to excellent advantage had it been capable at the time of greater
discrimination in its bombing and strafing. "I wish," General Eichelberger
wrote in late December, "we had some precision dive bombers that could lay the
bombs in a barrel. The greatest weapon we have is our air force and I do not
like to see it used so little. I realize we should be willing to take a certain
number of losses. If I could be sure nineteen bombs out of twenty would drop on
the Japanese I would be willing to have the twentieth come in on our own
troops, rather than not use air."25

The fact that between 22 December, the date of General Eichelberger's letter,
and the end of the campaign not a single request was made by American forces in
the field for direct air support26
was an indication of how much the air force
had yet to learn about its direct-support responsibility.

The role of the Allied Naval Forces in support of the beachhead fighting had
been small. Admiral Carpender's reluctance to send his ships into the waters
around Buna had from the first ruled out the possibility of a more active role.
In the end, except for the activity of the motor torpedo boats, the actual
naval support of the fighting at the beachhead was restricted to a single
mission--the transfer there by corvette of the successive echelons of the 18th
Brigade.

What the Campaign Taught

On the tactical level, the most important lesson taught was that existing
tactics and techniques would have to be developed to a high point of perfection
to reduce the kind of strongpoints planted in jungle terrain with which the
Japanese had so long held up the Allied advance. By the end of the campaign, a
beginning had been made in developing tactics and techniques which, with good
artillery support, usually proved effective. The first step was to have patrols
"fix" the position of the bunker. Next, the artillery would drive all the enemy
troops in the immediate area into the bunker and perhaps stun them. Just before
the artillery fire lifted, the infantry would attack under cover of its own
fire so as to catch the enemy troops in the bunker before they could get into
firing position. The enemy could then be finished off by grenades or the
ammonal

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blast bomb devised by the Australians, flipped into the bunker. Such devices as
satchel charges, effective flame throwers, jellied gasoline (napalm), all used
in later Pacific operations, were not available at Buna, but the experience
there helped to establish the need for them and undoubtedly hastened their
development for use in subsequent operations.

The campaign emphasized other lessons, some as old as warfare itself. It drove
home the point that troops should be trained in the kind of warfare they are
called upon to fight; that they should be habituated to overhead fire during
the training period; that they should enter combat "as hard as nails." Although
the amount of artillery that general headquarters provided was always far less
than the U.S. commanders on the scene regarded as necessary, the campaign
demonstrated the soundness of General Harding's and General Waldron's
representations to that headquarters that the artillery could go into the
jungle with the infantry and, what was more, could be used effectively in
jungle terrain. The campaign established that artillery, provided it was of the
right kind, was one of the best weapons a commander could have when faced with
bunkers of the type that the Japanese had built in the Buna-Gona area.

The campaign made clear that there would have to be better communication
between ground and air, and that to be useful in the jungle walkie-talkie
radios would have to be greatly improved. It established the effectiveness of
the sound-power telephone at ranges of up to two miles. It demonstrated that
the .37-mm. antitank gun with canister was an excellent antipersonnel weapon
and that rifle grenades were highly effective against enemy troops in trenches
or dugouts. The campaign also established the need of a lighter and simpler
weapon than the M-1 rifle in jungle warfare--a need that the carbine, had it
been available to the troops at Buna, would have met.

On the medical side, the campaign underlined the need for better distribution
to the troops of such items as chlorination pellets, vitamin pills, salt
tablets, and the like. It suggested the wisdom (following the successful
experience with it on Guadalcanal) of thence forward using atabrine as a
malaria suppressive. But even more important, the campaign instilled in the
troops and their commanders an awareness of the necessity for the most
thoroughgoing malaria discipline. The rigid malaria control measures, so much a
feature of subsequent operations in the Southwest Pacific, were in large
measure the fruit of the Papuan experience.

The campaign also drove home the lesson that, as a general rule, field kitchens
and sterilizing equipment should go with the troops and that failure to bring
them forward might jeopardize the health of the entire command. It reaffirmed
the age-old lessons that to be effective in combat the troops could not be
allowed to go hungry and that they needed such minimum amenities as occasional
hot meals, a little variety in the ration, and a chance to rest and clean up
after being too long in action.

Conclusion

On the strategic level, the victory in Papua had been a bitter anticlimax,
partaking more of tragedy than of triumph. The Japanese had seized the
Buna-Gona beachhead on the night of 21-22 July 1942 before Allied troops could
fortify it. A bloody and long drawn out campaign had ensued. When it finally
ended on 22 January 1943,

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the only result, strategically speaking, was that after six months of bitter
fighting and some 8,500 casualties, including 3,000 dead, the Southwest Pacific
Area was exactly where it would have been the previous July had it been able to
secure the beachhead before the Japanese got there.

But whatever the cost, the Southwest Pacific Area had finally broken the Japanese toe hold in Papua; it had added the
airfields at Dobodura and the port of Oro Bay to its other bases and could now
embark upon a more aggressive phase of operations. The hour of the Japanese
garrisons in the Huon Peninsula and in western New Britain had struck.

Footnotes

1. In this press release General MacArthur's headquarters announced that the
losses had been low, less than half those of the enemy, battle casualties and
sick included. It gave as the reason for this favorable result that there had
been no need to hurry the attack because "the time element was in this case of
little importance." Communique, United Nations Headquarters, Australia, 28 Jan
43, in The New York Times, 29 Jan 1943. General Eichelberger has written: "The
statement to the correspondents in Brisbane after Buna that 'losses were small
because there was no hurry' was one of the great surprises of my life. As you
know, our Allied losses were heavy and as commander in the field, I had been
told many times of the necessity for speed." Ltr, Gen Eichelberger to author, 8
Mar 54, OCMH files.

4. The 7th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 25th, and 30th Infantry Brigades, and the
2/7 Cavalry Regiment a total of between 18,000 and 20,000 men.

5. Average and total American and Australian front-line strengths by unit for
the periods indicated can be obtained from the applicable ALF Opns Rpts and G-3
Opns Rpts, both in G-3 Jnl, GHQ SWPA. For the Australians, the figure given is
an approximation since no precise figures on actual Australian front-line
strength are available. Ltr, John Balfour to author, 21 Dec 51.

6. Signal, Australian Military Headquarters, Melbourne to the Australian
Military Mission, Washington, No. MW-179, 22 Jun 50, abstract in OCMH files. It
should be noted that in these figures the missing in action are carried as
killed in action and hence are not listed separately.

8. The figures given are for the entire Papuan Campaign, including the period 22
July through 16 November, in which the Australians lost 2,127 killed, wounded,
and missing. Combined Australian-American casualties for the fighting at the
beachhead, the last phase of operations, were 6,419 killed, wounded, and
missing. There were 2,701 more casualties in the Papuan Campaign than on
Guadalcanal, where 1,600 were killed, and 4,245 were wounded, but there, during
much of the fighting, the positions were reversed: the Japanese were attacking,
and the Americans were holding a fortified position.

17. No final figure can be found covering the total Japanese commitment in
Papua. The figure given, the total of all known Japanese movements to Papua
since 22 July, as developed in the narrative above, agrees closely with
contemporary estimates, notably with those contained in AMF, The Battle of the
Beaches, p. 116, and Buggy, Pacific Victory, p. 213.

19. Major Koiwai arrived at Basabua with his battalion on 16 August 1942. He led it across the Owen Stanleys to Ioribaiwa and back. On 28 January 1943, after
filtering through the Australian lines, he reached Bakumbari with 150 others of
the 41st Infantry. An aggravated case of malaria, picked up at Buna, caused him
to be invalided out of the service, and was probably the main reason why he was
available for questioning at the end of the war. 18th Army Opns I, p. 39; GHQ
FEC G-2 Hist Sec, Interv of Maj Mitsuo Koiwai, Tokyo, 11 Aug 47, copy in OCMH
files.

23. Interv with Col Moffatt, 30 Oct 49; Hist Port Det E, COSC Buna; 32d Div
AAR, Papuan Campaign; 32d Div QM Section, Rpt on Activities, Papuan Campaign.
It will be recalled that by the end of December, the freighters alone had
brought in more than 3,000 tons of cargo, exclusive of vehicles and tanks.
Between 19 November 1942, the date of the first contact with the enemy, and the
end of the campaign, the total tonnage delivered by sea (exclusive of tanks,
vehicles, and road building equipment of whose weight no record was kept) was
8,560 tons.